KarmaFree Cooking

Muhamara

Now that the holidays are here, I am the designated dip maker for all the parties I’ve been invited to. I had found red bell peppers on sale and wanted to make something special with them.

A few months back, a KarmaFree Cooking reader mentioned me about Muhamara – a red pepper dip made with pomegranates. I started looking for recipes on the internet and learning more about it. Funny, but I found a recipe for Muhamara in my recipe book (the one I have built from magazine clippings that interest me) this version did not include the pomegranates, yet it is very tasty.

muhamara-dip

MUHAMARA DIP

2 red bell peppers

½ a 6-inch pita bread

½ cup water

1 small garlic clove

½ cup of toasted walnuts, plus more for garnish

1 tsp paprika

1 tbs balsamic vinegar

1 tbs freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

½ tsp Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Roast peppers until blackened all over under the broiler, turning with tongs as each side is blistered. I did it in a toaster oven at the highest temperature. Transfer the peppers to a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap; let stand about 15 minutes. Peel, and discard skins, stems, and seeds. Set peppers aside.
Toast pita bread until crisp and golden. Break into pieces; place in a bowl, and cover with the water. Soak until soft, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a sieve, and drain well, pressing out excess water. Set aside.
Combine garlic and walnut pieces in the bowl of a food processor; process until fine crumbs form, about 10 seconds. Add paprika, roasted peppers and pita bread; process until smooth, about 10 seconds. Add vinegar, lemon juice, oil, and salt, and season with black pepper. Pulse until combined.
Transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or overnight. Before serving, bring to room temperature. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with walnuts.

I served this dip with Wheat Thins. It was delicious. It definitely tastes better the next day when at room temperature. So plan ahead and make it the day before you’ll be serving it to guests.

This dip was also delicious served inside a sandwich, with tomatoes, lettuce and any other of your favorite fixings. Or also, you could repurpose it as a pasta sauce…

Tags: red bell peppers, walnuts

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Categories appetizers, Xmas

Stewed Chayotes

23 Dec

When the weather turns a little bit chillier – to us in Puerto Rico that means when the weather goes from the 90’s to the 78’s… sometimes what your body craves is something stewy, something warm to warm up your body and soul.

I have mentioned to you before about my Stewed Potatoes… well, I make it also with Chayotes. Chayotes are a vegetable that eats like a potato. You make it very similar, but the taste is more watery. I already showed you how to make Stuffed Chayotes.

Well, this time around we’ll make it for you in a stewed version. My aunt was feeling down after surviving stomach flu. She did not have appetite at all. So I offered to make her rice and something stewed, something with lots of sauce to wet the rice and give her some sustenance. It’s very easy to make… even when you’re sick you can make a small pot of this…

chayotes-guisados

STEWED CHAYOTES

1 medium chayote, peeled and cut into 1″ cubes

1 medium onion, sliced

1 tbs olive oil

1 tbs sofrito

½ of a vegetable bouillon cube

1 12 oz jar of stewed tomatoes

1 tbs tomato paste

1 laurel/bay leaf

8-10 olives with pimentos

1 roasted red bell pepper, sliced

1 tbs capers

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 tbs apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

½ cup to ¾ cup of water

In a medium sauce pan, add the olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add the sofrito and vegetable bouillon cube. Smash the cube a bit so it dissolves well. Add the onions and sauté until soften.
Add the chayote pieces and stir to combine. Add the stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, water, salt and pepper. Stir well to combine. Add the bay leaf, the olives, red bell pepper and capers. Cover and bring to a boil. Simmer for 25-30 minutes.
Make sure the chayotes are fork-tender. When they are, I usually turn it off and let it finish cooking with the residual heat from the stove.

Serve over brown whole-grain rice.

Tags: chayote

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Categories main courses, Puerto Rican delicacies

A night of French Cheeses

22 Dec

One of the presents I gave myself for my birthday was a Cheese Class given by our favorite French chef, David Chamyol, from the restaurant Bistrot de Paris in San Juan. My friends, Laura and Annie Mariel accompanied me for a whole night of dishes made primarily with French cheeses.

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It was very fun. First, we learned how to make raclette. Raclette is the cheese as well as the grill/broiler used to melt the cheese. It’s basically a melted cheese under a very special grill, also known as raclette, and then you pour the melted cheese on top of boiled potatoes, bread or vegetables. We tasted the cheese before melting and after… I was super surprised how different the cheese tastes after its melted. The taste is very pungent and sharp when you cut it fresh, but after its melted the taste turns very mellow. I loved it on top of the boiled potatoes… a great nibbling dish for a night with friends.

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papas-sobre-raclette-copy raclette-sobre-papas-copy
Actually, my friend Laura loved so much the raclette concept, she went online the next day and immediately bought herself a raclette grill. Apparently, at our Fete des Francophones in January, the raclette will be making a special appearance.
Then, we learned how to make Tartiflette… this is a baked dish made also with potatoes and onions sautéed in butter and olive oil. Then, you transfer these potatoes to a baking dish and cover with pieces of Reblochon cheese. Then you bake the tartiflette in the oven for 20 minutes and voila, you’ve got a very hearty dish that you can enjoy with a nice side green salad. The cheese is very smelly and pungent. This was my least favorite dish to be truly honest – maybe because I was getting full with the boiled potatoes and raclette… it is very rich and dense.

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To finish, we learned how to make a proper French cheese fondue. You shred equal parts of gruyère, comté and beaufort cheeses and add ½ part of vacherin cheese. You add those to a base of white wine, Dijon mustard, nutmeg, salt and pepper. If you truly want to make this karma-free, I would make it at home with a bit of apple cider, apple juice or white grape juice or even apple cider vinegar. You melt the cheeses in that base and add a bit of kirsch. I was told that a proper fondue was not a fondue without the kirsch. I’ll have to find a reasonable facsimile to emulate the cherry flavor without the alcohol. But it was lovely… I loved dunking the pieces of bread, cornishons, pear and apple in the smooth cheese blend. To be honest, this was my first time eating a cheese fondue. I’ve seen it made plenty of times at the Food Network, but never tried it myself. We all fell in love with the concept and decided we needed to repeat it for one of our Les Francophones get-togethers.

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I should also mention that in addition to the cheeses used in the dishes I have described above, we also tasted goat cheeses, cheeses made from brebis mountain sheep, blue cheeses, among others. These cheeses were specially provided by Marco Dettling from The Cheese Market, a Swiss guy now living in Puerto Rico and imports many fresh European cheeses. His appreciation and knowledge of European cheeses was evident. He actually turned out to be an “almost neighbor” of mine. We live in the same street… what a small world this is, no?

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What I loved about this cheesy experience was that there’s so much versatility when cooking with cheese… pastas or risottos is just a small fraction of what you can do. French cuisine is filled with creamy and cheesy concoctions that will give you the opportunity to savor new and interesting kinds of cheeses you might not be usually accustomed to taste. It’s a window into another culture and exposes you to new tastes and experiences.

Tags: cheese

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Categories MY EDITORIAL, Thanksgiving

I’m still here…

21 Dec

I feel bad… I feel as if I have sort of abandoned you. I took Thanksgiving week off as a little vacation, and afterwards, I got the most horrible flu possible. I was in bed sick for 2 full weeks… no energy or desire to cook, write or do anything than just lie in bed sick. I had fever every night and constantly felt shivers.

I tried many natural remedies – lemon, honey, aloe and onion to aid my strong coughs, medicinal teas, homeopathic syrups, drinking lots of liquids, etc. I ultimately had to resort to traditional antibiotics and remedies. The moral of this story is that you should always try first natural remedies to feel better when you’re sick, but you should also be cautious and if your illness has gotten a hold on you that natural remedies can’t help much anymore, we need to have the wisdom and fortitude to resort to traditional remedies and later on then do some fasting and eat lots of raw foods to counter acts any negative side effects of those traditional prescription drugs.

KarmaFree Cooking promotes a more natural and vegetarian lifestyle, but it’s better to “pollute” your body with some traditional drugs than to have a super clean system, but then be “6-feet under” because an illness was not properly taken care of. My natural doctor believes in that and I believe in him.

I am much better now and ready to roll with you…

And on a separate note… while I was “under the weather”, my friend Fiona from Recipes2Share gave me an Award – the Superior Scribbler Award. I really do not know the criteria used to give the award to someone, but nonetheless I feel very honored and privileged. So, I have set up my own criteria…

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I reciprocate to Fiona… by forwarding this award to:

Kathleen at Kathleen’s Vegetarian Kitchen – my friend and who gave me the initial push to start this KarmaFree project
Michael at Herbivoracious – who was brave enough to leave his 9-to-5 job and try vegetarian cooking as a career for a while
Heidi at 101 Cookbooks – who’s a continuous source of inspiration
Brenda at Bren’s FlaNboyanteats – a Cuban friend who’s taking the Latin cuisine to Emeril’s and beyond
My friends at Serious Eats – where I have found food junkies just like me where we can express ourselves without limitations

The rules of the award are simple to carry on:

Post the award on your blog
Link to me for giving it to you
Link the originating post here
Pass it on to five deserving people
Post these rules for your recipients

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Categories MY EDITORIAL

Mushroom and Goat Cheese Spread

24 Nov

I am taking these conversational French classes with my friends… we get together to speak French every week. We talk about our stuff, all in French. But we’re disciplined too – we discuss and review grammar, we give ourselves homework and even assign Show and Tell projects.

Our first Show and Tell presentation was about the food of a certain region of France. I selected the Loire Valley and the Center of France. I was not sure what I was going to find there, but I was determined to make my presentation vegetarian-friendly. We had to add a TASTE to the Show and Tell, making it a Show, Tell and Taste…

To my surprise, the Loire Valley is also affectively known as the Garden of France, because of its proliferation of fruits and veggies – apples, pears, plums, mushrooms – porcini, chanterelles, among many other wild varieties.

The Loire Valley is also the heart of goat cheese production in France. So for my TASTE portion of the presentation, I decided to make this spread as an appetizer, using traditional ingredients from the Loire Valley…

MUSHROOM AND GOAT CHEESE SPREAD

2 tbs butter

1 small shallot, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

½ pound of button mushrooms, coarsely chopped

4 ounces of goat cheese

2 ounces of cream cheese

1 tbs plain yogurt

2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and Freshly-cracked Pepper to taste

1 whole-wheat baguette, sliced on the bias

In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Add shallot and garlic and sautee for about 1 minute. Add the chopped mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms begin to soften, about 5-6 minutes.
In the bowl of a food processor, add the goat cheese, cream cheese, yogurt and cooked mushrooms. Add the oil, salt and pepper. Pulse a few times to combine.
Toast baguette slices. Serve spread with baguette toasts at room temperature.